Back in the Fold
by Beth Winter
Summary: Rebuilding your life is never easy. But that doesn't mean Sands won't try. And if he has to take on the CIA to do it, so be it. He is a hero of legend, after all. Rated PG13 or R. Chapter four UP.
1. Back in the fold

Sheldon Jeffrey Sands has installed himself as my muse and comments freely on stories I read and write, but he is surprisingly reticent about his own. When he does speak of himself, it is in fragmented monologues that twist and loop and curl in on themselves. He spreads a deck of possible pasts and futures on the threadbare coverlet of my bed and picks one at random. Picks one blind. This is one of his stories.  


Dedicated to Xandrabelle for finding a blackmail method.  


Disclaimer: Everything belongs to Robert Rodriguez and assorted. And this is all Sands' fault.  


**BACK IN THE FOLD**  


by Beth (renfri@astercity.net)  


The lobby comes first: soft murmurs of people coming and going. Not too loud, not too clear, because this is Langley and need-to-know is the first thing they teach you in CIA school. Then the sounds grow even softer, and he knows the reason. Between just-nice-enough suits his pure black must stand out like a crow among pigeons. A wolf among sheep...  


The wraparound sunglasses and pale skin probably aren't helping, either.  


He walks across white and black granite to the first checkpoint. A hand - a guard - reaches out to stop him even though his pass is in his hand.  


"Sir, you'll have to take off your glasses. We need to compare you to the photo. Sorry, that's the rules."  


He smiles and steps to the side, turning towards the guard's voice. "Carson, is it? Good to _see_ you. And of course." He reaches to his shades.  


John Carson is a veteran. He has seen men walk into this building he knows he can't talk about, even though the war they were fighting is long over. He has seen fellow agents gunned down. Now he leans against the wall and takes deep, deep breaths.  


The man in black smiles and walks on.  


Upstairs, the anteroom of the office of the Deputy Director of Operations is filled with people. Heads turn as he enters.  


"The man taking visitors yet?" he asks no-one in particular.  


"Not yet." This voice is familiar. Female, Lancôme perfume, jangling earrings. "Didn't they ship you off to Mexico?" Ah, yes.  


"They did. Weren't you in London?"  


"I was. The thing with Kelly's suicide and the WMDs. I kind of lost my temper in public when it blew up. They might send _me_ to Mexico next."  


"Next time, Davis, just shoot everyone," he advises her with a winning smile.  


"Don't you have a trademark on that?"  


Her laugh is cut short when the inner door opens. The room is silent. Footsteps approach him.  


"You're early," the DDO says. "We wanted to send someone to get you."  


"I managed."  


They walk into the inner office and the voices in the anteroom start up again just before the door closes.  


"My condolences about what happened." The DDO's voice is uneasy, stumbling. Like a blind man walking through an unknown room. "I hope you've recovered now."  


"No, I haven't." It's like a porcelain mask crumbling to dust. Beneath it the agent's face is animated, twisted by anger and hate. "I've still got no fucking eyes."  


A rustle of paper and a change of subject. "There are still some unclear issues about the Culiacan matter-"  


A quiet, exasperated sigh. "_I_ found out about Barillo's plan. _My_ agents saved the president, killed Barillo and Marquez, stopped the coup. I _was_ missing a vital piece of information, but I corrected that mistake." Two fingers of a leather glove point between the DDO's eyes. "Despite _you_ hanging me out to dry."  


"That was not-"  


"The fuck it was! There is unprofessional behavior here and sure as fuck it's not mine. _Your_ station chief cut my line. Now _you_ have all you wanted, and me? You want me to run the refreshments stand on the ground floor?"  


A sound halfway between a growl and a chuckle from the man on the other side of the desk, and the agent knows he's managed it again.  


"You'd poison half the agency inside three days."  


"Point." His body sprawls back in the chair, the manic intensity once more behind a porcelain mask. "So?"  


"So we have matters to discuss. You might not be aware of it, but the war on terror is losing its charm here. It's too much of politics now, and even finding the data is dangerous."  


"Yeah, yeah, Valerie Plame. I've been across the border, not under a rock."  


"The word of the day is normalization. Middle East stays big, but we need to get our own backyard in order. NAFTA's our answer to Europe, so we need to treat it as a vital interest. And Culiacan drove home just how precarious the Mexico situation is."  


An amused snort. "Precarious? Please. That's like saying Saddam's a bit eccentric. Mexico's a fucking time bomb, and it's labeled in Spanish to boot. The whole country's dancing to a different beat. Things are done _differently_."  


"And you know it intimately."  


A pause - no sound, no breath. Then, "What's the deal?"  


"An autonomous unit. Black ops. Highest-level liaison - me and the Mexican president, not even their Interior Ministry. I square it with the Senate committee and they don't even hear your name. Your pick of currently unassigned agents. One task."  


Breathing, slow and deep. "Bring balance to the country."  


"Do you like the job description?"  


"Do I ever. Don't you have, like, regulations against employing blind agents?"  


"Equal opportunity. And you impressed the right people, Agent Sands. You're still effective. You proved it."  


Long hair brushes his face as he shakes his head. "The right people? Fucking Texas cowboy, gotta vote for him the next time. When do I start?"  


"There's a group of unassigned agents I want you to meet. You'll also have to take on some locals - their president apparently had some suggestions. And it's a codename operation, so pick a word."  


"Team Scorpion. Carmen Davis as my second in command. And tell El Presidente I'll be happy to take on the music."  


A thousand things to do and questions to answer. But now, behind too-dark glasses, behind empty holes, he hears the sounds of guitars and gunfire. He can taste the dust and feel the weight of guns at his side.  


He makes a note to ask the Mariachi if there's any songs about Culiacan yet. The ballad of the blind gunman? He can live with that.  


He can live.  


~FINIS?~  


Note to the poor souls who have the luck of not being International Relations majors:  
Langley - CIA headquarters.  
DDO - Deputy Director of Operations. Head of the Operations department and generally the highest position a career field agent can aspire to.  
"the thing with Kelly's suicide" -   
Valerie Plame - Valerie Plame worked undercover as a CIA operative and an ambassador's wife. Her name and true occupation was leaked to the press this summer, supposedly in retaliation for her husband's debunking the news of Iraq buying uranium in Niger. Needless to say, the CIA is not amused.  



	2. Things to do in Sinaloa when you're dead

Apparently the one thing Sands likes is praise. After "Back in the Fold", it was much easier to make him talk again. He just sat down next to me in a lecture and started telling me, offhand, a story he once heard...  


Disclaimer: Everything belongs to Robert Rodriguez and assorted. And this is all Sands' fault.  


**THINGS TO DO IN SINALOA WHEN YOU'RE DEAD**  


by Beth (renfri@astercity.net)  


The town is not Culiacan, but the sounds are almost the same. The bar is mostly filled with locals. They drink, they listen to songs from the stereo behind the bartender (Chalino Sanchez singing about the king of the short airstrip, and he remembers the way _that_ guy died, bullets and fire) and they talk. These are regular people, not "businessmen," so there are few secrets. No secrets that can get you shot in the head, burned, your eyes gouged out - so they don't care who listens, if he looks friendly.  


And that is something Sands can do, even now.  


Most of his people are upstairs, sleeping off the trip. Davis is at the bar; she has charmed the bartender into letting her read the booklet from the CD currently playing, and now he hears her hum to the music as Sanchez sings the story of Raimundo Davila Parra. And he sits in the corner, listening to stories as he waits.  


The town is not Culiacan, but it's still the state of Sinaloa, and the talk turns to what happened three months ago in the state capital.  


"Of course the people fought Marquez," a man says. "But there were also mariachis, strange mariachis with guns. Even Him."  


"Him?" a young, boyish voice asks.  


"El Mariachi." The El has capital letters you can almost taste, and there's no doubt who he's talking about.  


"And he killed Marquez himself," another voice puts in. "My cousin works as a paramedic in Culiacan, and he says Marquez's knees were shot through before he was killed. It was punishment for his crime against Mexico."  


"We were lucky El Mariachi was there," the boy puts in. "Mexico was lucky."  


Sands' mouth curls in a half-smile; he adjusts his sunglasses to hide it. He leans his head back against the wall and listens some more as he sips his drink.  


"This wasn't luck," a new voice says. A woman, older, the smell of oranges. "There was a man who learned of the traitors' plan, and he brought in El Mariachi."  


This story is new, and the people fall silent. He turns his head towards the woman.  


"I only heard this story," she starts. "On the Day of the Dead I was too busy shooting down those cowards in uniforms, myself."  


The listeners laugh, and he smiles.  


"They say he was not Mexican, but he _cared_ for Mexico. So he learned of the plan Barillo and Marquez put together. And he went to the village where El Mariachi lived, and told him Mexico needed him."  


Heads nod and approvals are muttered.  


"But!" she says, and he knows she's holding up a finger. "He told someone he shouldn't have, too. He told his lover, and _she_ went to Barillo!"  


Gasps. Even the bartender is listening now, and he turns down the music. Davis is frozen, her jangling earrings silent. Only her fingers twitch nervously, making the CD booklet rustle.  


"Barillo, of course, tried to stop him. But he was too proud, that devil smuggler. And so was _she_. They say she was Barillo's child or lover, but either way they were alike, both with hearts as dark as the night. So they didn't kill the man. They took his eyes."  


And for a moment three months fade into nothing, and shining metal fills his vision. He feels his hands tremble. He bites the inside of his mouth, and the metallic taste brings him back to the present.  


"They left him, they went to join Marquez at the city hall. They thought he was no danger anymore. But he did not give up."  


As she pauses for a drink, you could hear a pin drop.  


"He walked the streets, blood on his face and a child by his side. He killed a man who wanted to kill him, and he took his guns. And he went to the main square. The child led his steps, and the blood ran down his face. He did not stop to wipe it."  


He nods as he listens and makes a mental note to ask about a certain boy when he comes to Culiacan.  


"Barillo's men saw him and laughed, for they knew he was blind. He heard their laughter, which told him where they were. And his bullets flew true. One of them shot him, but he died in return. And the blind man lay down, wounded, as he waited."  


The story, he muses, is not perfect. The storyteller missed the dust, the empty square, the distant sounds of fighting. And he is fucking proud of the way he shot the guy in the foot to make him scream and get a bearing for his head.  


"The traitor, she saw him lie there, and she thought he was dead. She came out into the square and kissed him, and she gasped when she saw he was alive. And he shot her as she pulled him up, her arms around him and his gun against her breast."  


He sees the legendary feel to the story already, perfectly allegorical, and he almost laughs.  


"And that's how he died," she says.  


He freezes.  


"He died in the main square of Culiacan, surrounded by the bodies of his enemies. He died as he shot the woman who betrayed him. And because she was dead, and the men were dead, there was no-one to protect Barillo. Barillo died for the eyes he tore out of that brave man's head. El Mariachi's bullet killed him, but his true killer was the man with no eyes."  


"And the man died..." the boy whispers.  


"They say El Mariachi took his body, to bury it where the heroes of Mexico lie. Or the child came and buried him as one of his own family. No-one knows." The woman's voice is quiet. "All they know is the blindness and the guns and the blood in the square."  


Someone offers a toast to the man with no eyes, and Sands drains his glass before getting up. His steps are sure as he walks between tables and people to the door. The night is chilly, and it stills his trembling hands.  


A sound - a soft chime - and he knows it's the man he was waiting for. The chains chime as the man approaches. Sands knows they're attached to skull-shaped buttons.  


"I heard you were dead." El's voice conveys no emotion.  


Sands smiles.  


"So did I."  


~FINIS?~  


Raimundo Davila Parra, the King of the Short Airstrip, belongs to Arturo Perez-Reverte and features (briefly and through the eyes of others) in the great book "Queen of the South". Read it if you want an insight into the minds behind the violent and strange life in the Sinaloa state and Culiacan itself.  
The storyteller is the woman from Culiacan with grey hair and twin gunbelts across her chest, who shouts out "cabrones!" and shoots at the soldiers. It's just a glimpse, but I really liked her :)  


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	3. First Blood

Sands is one hell of a storyteller. This is one of his stories.  


Disclaimer: Everything belongs to Robert Rodriguez and assorted. And this is all Sands' fault.  


**FIRST BLOOD**  


by Beth (renfri@astercity.net)  


They say they came from the north.  


There were two of them, they say. But 'they', the ever-elusive and all-encompassing 'they', don't have any details beyond dark clothes and dark hair, and really, in this hellhole of a country it could describe anybody.  


Sands knows better than the ones he listens to. Photographic memory and all that. Is photographic memory still photographic when you've got no eyes?  


He remembers.  


They attracted little attention and no recognition. Probably because a lack of blood and guns did make a difference in their image. So no-one disturbed them as they walked through the city night, nor when they entered a chapel built of glass bricks. It was empty, and they settled down to wait.  


One strummed a few notes on a worn guitar. The other walked his fingers along stone walls as he hummed in counterpoint.  


"Have you ever wondered if you'll have one of those built to you?" he asked quietly.  


The strumming stopped. "One of which?"  


"Shrines. Chapels. With people leaving prayers and offerings. 'Oh Saint Mariachi, please help me kill my enemies and improve my guitar skills'."  


"I'm no saint."  


Sands shrugged. "Neither was he."  


In front of them, the face of Jesus Malverde, patron of the poor, repressed and drug-smuggling, looked at them with benefaction in dark eyes. The candles burned and threw shadows. In the flickering light Sands' face was all smooth planes and soft angles. El bent over the guitar, and his face was hidden in the darkness of his hair.  


Footsteps outside, and they shifted in their seats.  


The man was sweating in the chilly night, and his movements were jerky as a puppet's. "Are - are you there?" he asked in English, with a heavy Spanish accent, as he entered the candle-lit chapel.  


"Of _course_ I am, Lopez," Sands said. "Do you have my answer?"  


"It... it is 'no'."  


"Excuse me?" Sands still did not get up, nor turn his head towards the man.  


"Senor Hernandez says 'no'. He is not scared by your threat, nor by the evidence you have."  


"Evidence?" Now Sands did turn his head and smile. "Who mentioned evidence? Me, I'm just threatening. For the hell of it, you might say."  


"Senor Hernandez thinks-"  


"If that fucker Hernandez wants me to know what he thinks, he should've dragged his own fat ass here. I won't talk with him through a goon like you, so you can just head right back to your fucking boss and say I'll be coming to talk with him eye-to-eye."  


"This is not-" Lopez was sweating even more now, his hands twitching in the direction of the gun on his hip.  


"The fuck it isn't. I said go!"  


As he left, Lopez was walking much faster than when he'd come in. Sands did not think it was accidental.  


"When?" El asked.  


"I was thinking eight in the morning. Just enough time for them to have a sleepless night."  


"Lopez will tell them they are dealing with a madman." El's head remained bowed, but there was a shade of a smile in his voice.  


"Yeah. I've still got it." Sands' smile was bordering on manic as the agent stood up. "Let's go, there's no reason why _we_ should get no sleep as well."  


As they exited the chapel, Sands turned and raised his hand in a lazy salute to the statue of the legendary bandit saint. One rogue to another, honor among thieves and all that shit...  


Morning, Sands decided later, was his favorite time of day in Mexico. The sun was just high enough to dispel the chill of the night, but not high enough to bake the earth into the dusty hell it would be in the afternoon. At eight the streets were already fairly busy. They passed small shops just opening and street vendors who were laying out their wares. Right in front of the unassuming building in Avenida Juarez that was their destination, a money-changer talked with a young man as she waited for the first people who'd want to change packets of dollars - often ill-gotten and still with traces of white powder - into pesos. She laughed as they passed, and her earrings jangled.  


There were six armed men behind the door, and they rolled their eyes. Metaphorically in Sands' case, of course. The guns remained trained on them as they walked up the stairs, the chains on El's pants jangling and Sands quieter than a dormouse. Hernandez waited for them in the hall. The smuggler had not lost any weight since the time Sands saw him last, if you judged by his heavy breathing.  


"I heard you were dead," Hernandez said.  


"You shouldn't trust everything you hear." Sands' voice was as light-hearted as if they were talking over coffee and cakes, not with six loaded weapons pointed at his head. "Take it from me: I trust only what I _see_."  


"Not all of us can do that," Hernandez scoffed. "In this business, I have to hear things. And I don't like what I hear lately."  


"Let me guess, that the Cubs lost?"  


"You threatened my people."  


"Did I? Oh yeah, I _did_. The way I see it, it's nothing personal. It's just that your partners across the border got in a bit of trouble. Now there's some people want to fuck _them_ up, and that kind of draws attention. So some _other_ people - I think we're on the third group now - gathered papers that show maybe your hands aren't as clean as you thought."  


Hernandez' heavy breathing sped up. "What about it?"  


"Well, at first sight I'd say trouble. Extradition, even. But if we can make a deal - a favor or two, nothing _too_ big - things can happen. You never know."  


Silence. Then, "You were the one who gathered the proof."  


Sands didn't say anything.  


"I am not afraid of you. Nor your bodyguard. And I don't need your help."  


The agent shrugged. "Suit yourself. Be seeing you."  


They didn't walk three steps down when Hernandez came after them. "We can... talk further," the smuggler offered.  


"All right then." And Sands' smile was positively angelic. "Let's take a walk outside. Get things in the open?"  


They stopped just outside the door. The guns disappeared as they stood in full sight of Avenida Juarez. The money-changer was counting a thick sheaf of pesos as the man tried to talk her into a weekend trip out of town.  


"See that?" Sands asked. "That's the Mexico you made here. Everyone living off stuff that kills, living off killing. I think it's time to turn the tables."  


"Kill everyone?" Hernandez' eyes darted to El.  


The mariachi regarded him calmly. "Kill your kind."  


"You think you can get away with it?"  


"We can try."  


Sands heard the smile in El's voice and wondered what it looked like. Judging by the way Hernandez backed away a step, not too friendly.  


Then Hernandez took the agent by the elbow and led him a few paces away from El and his own goons. Sands tensed and consciously stopped himself from breaking a few bones for breaching his personal face. Not worth the effort of digging around in that fat, for one.  


"That man is like those who fought Marquez. A Mexico fanatic, an ignorant. But you... I hear things. I hear you are CIA." Hernandez pronounced the name of the agency the Mexican way, "Siya". "What do you care about Mexico?"  


"Maybe I don't. Maybe I just want to see fat narco bastards like you six feet under. But I'll settle for behind bars."  


This, after a fashion, did the trick.  


Hernandez' weight made his strength all the more astonishing. His punch turned Sands around and sent him crashing into someone five meters away.  


Someone soft, floral perfume. Jangling earrings and something was pressed into his hand. A whisper. "Street's empty. Give'em hell."  


And then he was alone, and the money-changer screamed shrilly as the man she'd been talking to pulled her behind a parked car. The sound drowned out the click of safety catches.  


"You are the one with the proof. So you die," Hernandez spat.  


The first shot, and Sands realized he was less than two hundred meters from his first gunfight, what he thought of as his first _real_ gunfight outside Barillo's impromptu clinic. But now he knew what to do.  


Let them fire. It gave him targets, and a claim of self-defense for later. Ahead on both counts, beat that, and those guys couldn't, couldn't hit the broad side of a barn. Okay, maybe El wasn't helping them - by the sound of it he had used a moment of distraction (and thank you, bastard, that was me nearly getting my jaw broken there) to wrestle a gun from one of the goons. Sands stood up from his roll and aimed. Thought took a backseat to reflexes and he got off four shots before he realized he'd pulled the trigger.  


A wounded bull's roar, and Sands felt the rush of air as he whirled to avoid Hernandez' wild charge. He didn't manage to evade completely - no fucking fair for a guy that large to move that fast - and his glasses fell to the ground.  


Breeze on his eyes, on what used to be his eyes, Hernandez suddenly paralyzed with fear.  


Exactly time enough for Sands to put an ounce of lead in the drug lord's forehead.  


Then the street was quiet, too quiet for downtown Culiacan in the morning. The mariachi's chains jangled as their owner approached. A pause, and then Sands reached out to take back his shades.  


"Let's take it this way, it can only get better from here," the agent said. "Because it sure as fuck can't get worse."  


"You mean the next time we'll blow up the whole street?" Lorenzo demanded as he and Davis left their hideout behind the car.  


Davis took off her outside shirt with a ripping sound of artificial silk. She used it to wipe at her garish money-changer makeup. "Next time, we get enough dirt on the bastards that we don't have to distract the main boss while the rest of the team wraps up the loot."  


"And by the way?" Sands turned his head towards her.  


"Garrett called, cat's in the bag and the cops love us to pieces. And Garrett loves playing team vice-leader, which as I remember-"  


Sands shook his head. "We needed reliable backup here," he reminded her.  


"Besides, this was more fun than digging up drugs," Lorenzo protested. "Carmen-"  


"_YOU_," she hissed, "try to remember the name's _Davis_-"  


Sands left his team vice-leaders to their bickering and walked to where El was standing at the door of Hernandez' office. He could tell the mariachi's exact position even when the chains were silent; there was a peculiar quiet warmth to the man's presence. Sands' leather-clad fingers touched a strong arm.  


"I did not want to kill today."  


"You heard the lade, if we get our act together we won't have to." Sands' voice was low, hypnotic. "And just think of how many people _they've_ killed. Fuck, think of your beloved Mexico."  


"Balance for my country?"  


Sands made a sound halfway between a laugh and a choked-off sigh. "Justice. The old-fashioned kind with lots of blood and wailing."  


"Blind justice." El smiled.  


"Fucking A." Sands draped an arm around El's shoulder. "Now help an eyeless man whose sixth sense's been working overtime today. We should get going before Davis and your mariachi buddy manage to kill each other."  


When they left Culiacan, the sun was right above their heads and the air smelled of spring. Yes, Sands remembers it well.  


Now all he has to do is write it in a report in a way that'll let him get away with it.  


~FINIS?~  


While Malverde and the money-changing girls in Avenida Juarez are real, they were brought to my attention by Arturo Perez-Reverte in "Queen of the South".  


I've no idea why Sands and El are so chummy all of a sudden, but El says he can tell me that story. He also says it'll be called "The Ballad of the Blind Gunman." Sands just smiles, eyeless and sharp like a shattered mirror.  


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	4. Ballad of the blind gunman

Yet another in my unnamed series. This time, El Mariachi tells the story. Rhymes courtesy of Rhymezone.  


Disclaimer: Everything belongs to Robert Rodriguez and assorted. And this is all Sands' fault.  


**BALLAD OF THE BLIND GUNMAN**  


by Beth (renfri@astercity.net)  


_Blind, kind, defined, maligned..._  


El prefers writing music over lyrics any time. And though his English is good, using it to create something with rhyme and rhythm is difficult. But for this song, creating both a Spanish and an English version will be the right thing. Perfect balance, isn't that what Sands would say?  


_Night, sight, plight, delight..._  


Night has long fallen. The large room filled with equipment, called Team Scorpion Headquarters in official documents and The Batcave by Sheldon Jeffrey Sands, is almost empty. In a distant corner Lorenzo and Carmen Davis are bent over blueprints and photos, going over yesterday's mission. Sands is sitting in front of his computer. Over the headphones in his ears an inhuman voice reads out documents and correspondence. Sands' fingers rest on the keyboard, but when he periodically stretches to loosen the muscles in his back and neck, his hair brushes the neck of El's guitar.  


_Begin, within, akin, might-have-been..._  


Sands mentioned the song on that first night, when they sat outside a tavern in a small town on the eastern border of the state of Sinaloa.  


I just heard a story, he said. About Culiacan. Are there songs, too?  


Corridos, yes, El told him. Not very good ones.  


Write a good one then. I've about enough of songs where the bad guys are the heroes.  


And here he is, choosing notes and picking rhymes.  


_Hero, grow, although, reap what you sow..._  


He remembers that night well. It took an hour before Team Scorpion (a name only Sands could think up; El is grateful that the idea of costumes with a scorpion logo was unanimously vetoed) was even mentioned. Instead they talked about other things.  


He told how it felt to put a bullet in Marquez's head, to lay his ghosts to rest with a pull of the trigger.  


Sands told how it felt to kill people you couldn't even see, and rebuild your life in one wild-assed gamble on the top floor of a building in Langley.  


El came to that town under direct orders from the President. He was fully prepared to leave before morning. But as he listened to Sands' vibrant vision of cleaning up Mexico, things changed.  


You see, El, one person can do lots. You of all people know that. Just think what we can do with a bit of real organization.  


Three hours and he was sold. And that was when he decided to write this song.  


_One, gun, stun, undone..._  


They are a strange group of strange warriors. The Americans don't talk much about themselves, but he knows Sands chose the mavericks, the ones who were good - damn fucking good, Sands said that night - but for some reason did not fit other cogs in the machine that was the CIA. The Mexicans talk even less, but El chose them himself, and he knows they're good, and that they have absolutely nothing left to lose.  


Then there is himself and Sands. All stories he heard equal two commanders in one team to disaster, yet for some reason this arrangement works. It is something he never expected when he first met the agent, before the Day of the Dead.  


Sometimes he wonders if that was, truly, the same man. It is not only the sunglasses Sands now holds on to like a lifeline. Nor the clothes: warm colors replaced with dead black. It is in the way the agent moves, the way he kills. It is the difference between a pampered pet that happens to have claws and a feral cat who fights for his life so often, he no longer sees it as something unusual.  


Now Sands, in black and with death by his side, is someone El understands.  


_Dark, mark, spark, stark..._  


During that first night, Sands even found it in himself to laugh at what happened in Culiacan. Spectacular fucking mess - I ended up helping _your_ cause, there in the end. Bleeding for Mexico, as if the bitch was not satisfied with taking my eyes. Fucking ironic...  


El remembers the way Sands smiled then, easy and careless.  


He tries to imagine the same face tightened in pain, blood tears flowing from under black sunglasses.  


_Tears, appears, frontiers, fears..._  


Insulting Mexico is still one of Sands' favorite pastimes. He even does it when El talks to the President; the agent goes off on long diatribes on how fucking stupid this country is, and El has to put his hand over the phone's receiver and threaten to shoot Sands if he does not shut up.  


El has still not told the President that Sands' initial plan was to intervene after the assassination. He is not sure why. It may have something to do with the fact that in Culiacan, in the end, El faced a doctor and a man weakened by a serious operation. If there had been one more trained gunfighter, things would have been different.  


But the gunfighter had her guts blown out in the city square by a man who didn't know when to give up.  


_Surrender, splendor, render, defender.."  
_

El has known good people and evil ones. He prides himself on the ability to tell one from the other.  


There has only been one case where, to date, he has not made the call. Still, though he cannot attach a label to the agent, he does know what to expect from him. Shooting impossibly straight for someone who does not see the target. Incomprehensible humor that Sands does not mind if no-one else gets. Cold analysis of each situation and perfect determination once the optimum decision is reached. Plans twisted enough that no-one figures them out until it's too late and their blood is pooling on the floor. And, in the end, someone who saves the day once everything's gone to hell and back.  


El takes a comfort in knowing he's not the only hero around.  


_Eyes, prize, disguise, demise..._  


A hand on his arm almost makes him jump.  


"It's late," Davis says. Her other hand rests on Sands' shoulder; the blind man isn't wearing his headphones anymore. "You should rest."  


El shakes his head and bends over his guitar again.  


"I don't sleep much anyway," Sands says lazily. "And I want to hear the song he's working on."  


"This will take time," El warns him.  


Sands twists the swivel chair so that he can half-lie on the back of the chair and look at the mariachi. "Time, I've _got_."  


Davis shakes her head and heads upstairs. Sands listens to the music.  


And El plays.  


~FINIS?~  


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